A/N: For Morgan, best mate and all-around life coach, as always. And for Marra, Jeanne's namesake and keeper of the muse burning. Thanks so much to those who took time to review, you're all precious!

The stoned wall feels uncomfortable against Lily's back, and the wind is as cool against her tear-stained face. The sighs and the occasional sniffs get lost in the breeze, infusing the dull thrum of music wafting from somewhere in the castle. Unfortunately, her thoughts remain persistent with plaguing her mind, and she's (almost) relieved when a voice behind her unknowingly interrupts the mental chaos—that is until a millisecond later when she realizes who owns it.

"What are you doing here?" is what he says, and Lily looks up to find James standing over her, barely making him out because he's standing against the light and her vision's a little blurry. She adjusts her eyes to the darkness and notices that his tie is askew, his shirt is untucked, and his black hair is even more tussled than usual. He may be drunk by the way he slurred a little, but then again James has always possessed this ragged, all-over-the-place demeanor. (It's one of the many things she secretly loved about him.)

"You're on the wrong tower, Evans," he fills the silence. "Party's the other way."

A lump forms in her throat at the sight of him, and she's torn between the urge to bolt and the desire to stand up and look at him properly. Fix his tie or something. Take his hand, ruffle his hair, scream at him... do something, anything, that may cancel out all the wrong words said and all the wrong decisions made. Anything to maybe bring back things to the way they were.

Instead, she swallows all this down and averts her gaze. "I needed air, I suppose."

"You've barely been around five minutes in there."

She shrugs. "Yeah well."

A familiar silence passes over the two of them, and Lily waits for him to speak again or leave, but it would be a lie to say she doesn't want him so badly to take the space beside her. She opts not to voice this out, however, to avoid saying something stupid that may drive him away (again). She's oblivious to the fact that James, as he stares at her huddled figure, is meanwhile bitterly wondering how she can just sit there and... well, not do something.

Because he certainly can't. He can't just stand there, he can't just leave—bloody hell, he couldn't even just let her go when he saw her leave the Gryffindor common room a few minutes ago. As it turns out, he automatically excused himself from Jeanne's company after Lily's departure, and demanded Sirius he hand him the map to find her. He almost punched his drunk best mate in frustration when he wouldn't give him what he needed, but he thought even if Sirius wasn't so sodding sloshed he couldn't really honestly remember where the damn map was, and if Remus didn't have the sense to remember where Sirius liked to hide things, James wouldn't have given up. Of course not. He would have gone out and searched the entire damn castle if he had to, a bit dizzy and disoriented as he was, because he couldn't let Lily Evans go. Not tonight, not when he swore to give up, not ever. He couldn't leave even if he would have wanted to, because her eyes haunted him and she and that Hunter git apparently called it quits and he just—he really, really wanted to talk to her.

He can't bear to just stand there and let the dead of the night eat its way through them. He can't just not do something.

He wants her back. He's certain.

She does, too. So much.

But like many times before tonight, they have no idea how mutual the feeling is.

The silence is neither common nor awkward, however, because as frustrated and helpless as they both feel at the moment, Lily and James can't help but stall speech just so they can be in each other's company for a little while more—or at least for longer than how it usually takes for either of them to say something tactless that will make the entire stolen moment snap.

She wants to tell him she's sorry, but she doesn't know how. He wants to tell her he's sorry, but he's not sure if he can keep not hurting her after this, or sodding Merlin, if she'd even still believe him. He thinks he'd rather be nothing in her life now than be the constant, unfailing source of her pain...

In the end, it's Lily who breaks the silence. "How did you know I was here?"

He takes something out of his pocket and holds it up. "Map."

Lily's gaze lingers at him for as long as she dares, and then she realizes, "You came looking...?"

He hesitates. Softly, "Yes."

She doesn't respond to that. She doesn't know how to.

After a moment of silent deliberation, he shuffles over to where she is and sits down, his right shoulder brushing her left. Neither speaks for what feels like forever, and James leans his head back against the tower ledge and watches the night sky. The Astronomy Tower at night is usually the perfect hideout for those who need the occasional calm amidst a prying, boisterous castle, but despite the quiet and the otherwise pleasant atmosphere it provides now, James is reminded that silence doesn't always come with peace. But as he steals a glance at Lily and notes—for the millionth time in his existence—how beautiful the redhead witch looks in the moonlight, he figures it's the closest thing to calm he's felt in a while.

Well, almost.

She must have noticed him watching her. "You're on the wrong tower, too, y'know," she observes.

He shrugs.

"Congratulations on that match," she offers him.

"Thanks." Later, he would think that if he had thought it over he would have said something else. But he rarely thinks when he's around her, James does, and it's out before he can help it. "I heard you and Hunter broke up."

"I heard you and Jeanne didn't," she bites back. Her face remains impassive, but James catches a hint of hardness in her eyes. He must have just easily imagined it, though. It's hard to tell with the light. Or the lack thereof.

His gaze returns upwards, exhaling. "Yeah, of course we didn't."

Lily doesn't comment.

"Because there was nothing there to break in the first place."

At first she still doesn't answer, and he wonders if the silence is of surprise or apathy. "Oh?"

"Yeah."

"Why are you here, James?"

He huffs. "You think I haven't asked myself that question?"

She stares at him incredulously and he stares determinedly, defiantly back. He expects a heated rebuttal from her, and it rather comes as a surprise when she moves to stand. For someone well on the way to intoxication, he catches on fast and gets to his feet as well.

"Listen, Evans—"

"James, I—"

They both stop, James' hand flying up to rub the back of his neck in apprehension. Lily bites her lower lip, like she's deciding something, and it comes to James that had she not talked the same time he did he wouldn't have honestly known what to say.

"Erm—" he starts, but is thankfully cut off.

"No, shut up for one second," she says. "I have to get this out."

He nods, a bit nervous.

Lily looks thoughtful, her head slightly inclined to one side as she considers how to rightly phrase her sentiments. "Look, Terrence... Terrence was perfect."

James' jaw hardens. He turns away from Lily and leans against the ledge, his eyes sweeping over the vast, dark grounds below. "Brilliant."

"No, just—shut up one second..."

"No, you do," James retorts. "Because I didn't come here for that."

Lily frowns. "What did you come here for then?"

"Well, I—I don't know. Just... you." He glares at her half-heartedly. "But if you're only going to talk about how bloody perfect Wanker McCheekbones is and how sorry you are that he's gone off being some prissy little gentleman to some other bird then I'm sorry, Evans, but I'm not the person to talk to."

"Will you stop talking and actually let me finish?"

"No," says James heatedly. "Because I can't be that generous. I can't—I have no desire whatsoever to—"

"I love you."

He blinks. "What?"

She sighs. "He was perfect. He is. But I love you."

He can hear her. He certainly can see her in front of him. And he can hear her. He heard it. Twice. Incidentally, he also knows what those words mean, and he knows it's her, it's Lily, but it's not... it's just not quite processing, and she's... she's— "What?"

"I shouldn't have started anything with him," Lily begins to explain, heeding none of his apparent befuddlement. "I feel horrible for it, for making him believe I could... I could move on, but you're not exactly that easy to..." She takes a deep breath, her mouth thinning into a determined line before speaking once more. "The thing is—you were right about Sev. And I'm sorry. I really shouldn't have—I should have gone up to you the moment I realized that, but then Jeanne... and anyway it was too late, and I was just really scared..."

He makes a face at her. Jeanne? "Evans..."

But she holds up a hand to cover his mouth, undeterred. Taken by surprise, he stays still and lets her. "No, please, just—let me just say this, alright? You don't have to say anything back. You can do whatever you want after. Really. I just want to let you know, because it's killing me, and I miss you, but I just couldn't… it was so bloody stupid..."

He easily grabs her hand and sets it down. "Lily—"

"When I was with you," the witch begins again, her voice bordering on frenzied. James, having a strange feeling that she's been keeping this all in for a while, stays silent this time. "When I was with you I felt like a kid again. I felt every damn thing, James, all the damn time. I was always happy and mad and frustrated and excited and everything I felt was magnified a hundred times, and when I realize how much I feel for you, it's... I've never ever thought I'm capable of it. Everything I did, everything I said, everything started to revolve around you, and I felt like I was becoming less and less myself and more and more like... I don't know. It terrified me. I couldn't face it, and I was scared of breaking in your hands and getting left behind and..." She looks down and a sad smile plays at her lips. "When Sev...when that ship sailed—indefinitely—I should have owned up to it and said sorry, I know, but I couldn't. I didn't. I thought I didn't want to feel like that again, like this again, and that—" she lets out a hollow laugh and shakes her head, "—that was silly. Because it's rather the best feeling in the world..." James grapples at something to say, but he really just wants to kiss her at this point. "But then Terrence was there. And he was perfect, he really was. He was supposed to be perfect. He was there and so I gave him a chance and excused it as wanting to find myself again."

"Did you then?" James quickly tries to cut in, half-curious, half-dreading. "Find yourself? With him?"

Lily sighs, her eyes on the horizon afar. "That's the thing about that excuse. It's just that—an excuse. A pretentious one. I realized I'd found myself long before that. Because who I am, who I really am…" She swallows and drags her eyes up to him, her eyes welling up. "I belong with you. I wasn't trying to be myself again—I was running away from who I was. Because the truth is that I was just really scared of what—of how much—you made me feel. But I mean, you bring out the worst in me, maybe, but that's just what I'm made of, you know? That's just really me. And I should accept it the way you seem to overlook it, because despite it all you never make me feel bad about myself. You bring out the worst in me, Potter, but at the end of the day... it's you who bring out the best, too."

James merely stares at her, dumbfounded.

"Running away from you meant running away from me," she says. "Because that's just really what I did—I ran away. Which is why… Terrence was great and charming and kind and he made sense, he really did—but I wasn't there with him. I was never there with him. I've always been with you."

Still speechless but a lot less thoroughly flabbergasted now, he tries to come up with a coherent thought and an appropriate answer. The shift in his mood is too fast and too vastly different to keep up with—actually, no, is this even real? He has been drinking after all. It's difficult for him to recognize the light, bubbling feeling settling on the pit of his stomach as happiness. Unbelievable, overwhelming, bloody fucking Lily-Evans-and-no-one-else-induced happiness.

"It's absurd, really, because you were an idiot most of the time," says Lily, laughing through her tears. "You were infuriating. You were mad and loud and cocky and—and you could make me cry and laugh and furious all in five minutes... you drove me crazy eleven sodding times out of ten! You were just absolutely, beyond cure insane, James Potter, did you know that?" She pauses to hastily wipe a tear, and James smiles fondly down at her. "You didn't make sense. Not at all. But I was in love with you. I was in love with all of you. And it was incredibly stupid of me to not realize all that sooner."

He swallows, noticing the stark use of past tense. "Do you still...?"

She abruptly turns away from him, as if the spell is broken. "I'm sorry," she mutters, "I just... yeah. Sorry. I should go—or you should. I was here first! Jeanne must be—"

"Lily," he says, he finally says, and it sounds like a command, like an answer to a prayer, like the beginning of a fairytale. But he wastes not one more second and gives her no time to bloody start rambling again (although he loved the way tonight turned out, he loved it quite a bit); he steps forward and traps her against the tower ledge, closes in, his toned arms on either side of her and the night breeze against his cheeks. And Godric, how he missed being so close to her like this, nothing but green eyes and that scarlet fringe, her lips a word away and her breath easily melding with his.

"There's never been anyone else," he tells her, dead serious. "Not ever."

And then he leans in, pauses before her lips in last-minute question—one that doesn't last because she answers immediately and—god. This is it. He's been dying all his life to have this. Her.

Her hands weave themselves around his neck and she pulls him closer. She tastes like firewhiskey and a million Quidditch victories and forever, like everything and nothing all at once.

It might just have been minutes, but it would have lasted a decade for all James cared. He doesn't need to say anything. He loves her, no one else, and his lips and his hands are both proof and witness, and when he feels her smile through the kiss he knows that she gets it.

When he breaks away, there's that look in her eye that beats whatever else anything has to offer, because he knows she's his again.

"You reek," Lily informs him, crying and laughing and lightly whacking him on the chest.

"Missed you too," replies James, his hands cradling her face, one thumb gently swiping a tear.

Her own comes up between them to fix his tie. "You're such a slob, James Potter."

"And yet you're in love with me."

She purses her lips and looks up at him, narrowing her eyes and huffing in disbelief.

He can't help the grin spreading on his face. And then he sobers up and assumes a stern expression. "Promise me though," he says, "no more deplorable words rubbish, yeah?"

Lily smiles sheepishly. "Right." Her expression softens. "I'm really sorry..."

"Me too. But none of that now..."

"Remus was right, I never would have realized..."

"Some other time, Evans..."

"I just feel like I should—"

He shakes his head and places a finger on her lips. "Nope. Shut up."

She sighs theatrically and then peers up at him from under her lashes. "Make me—I'm all yours."

James, with that devious smirk of his own and a boyish chuckle (and a silent promise to never let her go ever again), duly obliges.

Fin